Throughout the whole 20th century millions of people were inspired by conquering the Space. But have you ever wondered what it is to be an astronaut and what one regular working day looks like in the Space? In
this video we have the chance to step into the shoes of an astronaut from the International Space Station.
“Earthly” notions of day and night became quite useless up there as an astronaut sees the sunrise and falls 16 times for 24 hours. Having a strict schedule maintained and planned step-by-step by the Earth mission control, one working day in ISS is approximately from 6 am to 9.30 pm Greenwich daytime.
At 6 am everyone is getting up, catching up with emails and with the new tasks from the mission control center. Their hygiene routine is quite different from ours as the crew uses special shampoos and soaps. However, the tooth brushing is pretty much similar as our habits and the astronauts are even allowed to have their own favorite toothbrush. Without a fridge the breakfast is predominantly from sandwiches and there is an abundance of lemonade, coffee or tea. But how about the need for a toilet? The microgravity in the Space causes some challenges: each member has a personal urinal funnel for the liquid waste while the solid things have their own system adapted for recycling in the out-of-earth conditions.
It’s time for work: the duties vary, a battery change requires 4 hours to dress up and 100 pages of checklist to follow. The common joke is that everyone on the stations speaks Runglish, especially valid on the team lunch on Sundays. Throughout the year there are regular deliveries of fresh food and clothes and having team lunches is proven to be one of the things that keeps the spirit of the team.
The main activities are scientific missions guided from the mission control labs from 4 sources: USA, Russia, EU and Japan, each of them having laboratory spaces for experiments with different animals such as worms, rats, mice, and the most frequent: the astronauts themselves. For such analysis each crew member is required to work out for 2 or 3 hours per day. As they lack gravity forces in Space the muscles atrophy and bones grow brittle, so in the Space they have on their disposal a bike without a seat, a treadmill, and the so-called: advanced resistive device, or an alternative to lifting heavy weights. After dinner it’s personal time: some are using the wi-fi for connection with the significant others on the Earth while others just go to the beautiful cupola where they see how the world goes by.
The main activities are scientific missions guided from the mission control labs from 4 sources: USA, Russia, EU and Japan, each of them having laboratory spaces for experiments with different animals such as worms, rats, mice, and the most frequent: the astronauts themselves. For such analysis each crew member is required to work out for 2 or 3 hours per day. As they lack gravity forces in Space the muscles atrophy and bones grow brittle, so in the Space they have on their disposal a bike without a seat, a treadmill, and the so-called: advanced resistive device, or an alternative to lifting heavy weights. After dinner it’s personal time: some are using the wi-fi for connection with the significant others on the Earth while others just go to the beautiful cupola where they see how the world goes by.
